Sayonara, Johnny
by karly05
Summary: A step that must be taken.  Plays into my overall Ferb/Vanessa arc, with a reference back to Good Old Fashioned Fun.


**A/N – Well, it's a basic necessity for any Ferb/Vanessa Shipper: How to Get Johnny Out of the Picture. Here's my take. **

Sayonara, Johnny

Vanessa Doofenshmirtz stood at her locker at the end of the day, stuffing textbooks into her backpack, trying to decide what she absolutely had to work on tonight, and what could wait for the weekend. Every school year before this one, it had never been a struggle; she did only as much homework as she had to in order to get by without provoking a lecture from her mother about her grades. It had never been difficult; Vanessa was bright, and good at retaining things, even when she didn't care to pay much attention. She'd never freaked out over tests; her 'whatever' attitude let her answer what she knew and not sweat the rest, and this lack of anxiety and over-thinking had served her surprisingly well. This year, though, things had changed. She was actually challenging herself with some tougher math and science classes, as well as picking up French again after a year away from it. Vanessa hadn't initially planned on this; in fact, she'd spent the first week of the new term in and out of the counselor's office, changing her schedule around to add the more difficult courses. And, why shouldn't she? She was starting her Junior year; she would have to take a serious look at college before long, unless she wanted to spend her life working at Mr. Slushy Burger. Besides, with any luck, her newfound academic aspirations would finally prove she was responsible enough for her own set of wheels.

She was still wrestling with her backpack when he turned up. "Hey, Vanessa," he drawled, in that husky voice.

"Hi, Johnny." She didn't even look up at him.

"You want to come hang out?" He leaned against the locker next to hers. "I've got my guitar in the car. We could go to the park."

"Not tonight," she answered, zipping the backpack. "I've got a lot of homework."

"Again? That's all you do any more," he groused. She didn't need to see the eye-roll; it was right there in his tone.

It wasn't the first time they'd exchanged words over her new study habits. If Johnny was content to sit in the back row and doze or doodle his way through the minimum requirements, that was his problem. And to think, only last spring, that 'too cool to care' attitude was one of the things that had attracted her to him in the first place.

"It's like you've gotten totally boring ever since school started," he added. When she didn't answer this remark, he said, "So, you want a ride?"

"No, thanks," she started to walk down the hall, and he walked with her. "My Dad's picking me up."

"I thought you hated it when your Dad picked you up," he pointed out. "I thought you'd be glad that I got a car, so you wouldn't have to ride with him."

"You don't have a car," she snorted. "You have some pile of junk that can't go five miles without breaking down or falling apart. It always stinks inside, because you won't tell anyone to put out their damned cigarettes. You're always mooching gas money, from me and everyone else."

Fishing in his pocket, Johnny pulled out a handful of keys and offered, "Okay, okay, here. You can drive."

"I don't want to drive!" Vanessa snapped at him. "Don't you get it? I would rather ride on the back of my Dad's scooter than push your clunker out of another traffic jam!"

"Whoa, you don't have to yell at me," he flinched at her outburst. "I just offered you a ride."

Vanessa stopped in her tracks. He was right. For the last month or so, every conversation they'd had seemed to end with her snapping at him. Maybe that was why she'd been avoiding him. How had they come to this in only six months? Johnny had moved to Danville and started at her school around last semester's Spring Break, and she'd been drawn to him at once. He played the guitar, and had a weird-colored streak in his hair. He didn't get all shook up over things, and he didn't blather all the time – in other words, she had to admit, he was pretty much the opposite in temperament from her aggravating father. Johnny was his own person, and did his own thing and didn't care what anyone else thought of him – whereas, Vanessa cared what everyone thought, and relished the cool image of the punk rock rebels she'd taken up with. She had made the first move toward him, and had been thrilled when he'd started hanging out with her. By the end of their Sophomore year, Vanessa and Johnny were established as a Couple. She'd figured – maybe she had even hoped –that her parents would be freaked out by this, but Mom had never said a harsh word about him coming over to the house, and Dad had actually invited him to her Sweet 16 party, and let her go camping with him and their friends, without threatening to Inator him into another dimension.

Now, though, as they stood in the hallway together, she sighed and said, "Johnny – could we go somewhere and talk?" This wasn't going to be easy, but it was time to stop dodging the facts.

"Yeah," he answered. "That's all I wanted to do, anyway."

Pulling out her cell phone, Vanessa texted her father to say that she was running late, and they walked out to the school grounds. Football practice was underway on the athletic field, and they sat down in the grass some distance away.

"Johnny," Vanessa spoke first, not sure where to begin. "I'm sorry I yelled at you, okay? I know things have changed – I've changed – a lot, lately. That happens, when you're sixteen, you start thinking about life, and the future, and sometimes, the things you thought you wanted turn out not to be what you -"

"Whoa," Johnny cut her off. "I don't know where this is going, but… Vanessa, I think it's time we-" He stopped cold right there, and gave a dry cough of a laugh. "Heh, funny."

Baffled, she looked at him and asked, "What's funny?"

"I can't remember what I was going to say," he confessed.

Vanessa's eyes went wide. He had interrupted her for this? "Really, Johnny? Really?"

"Well, I know what I _want_ to say, just not how I was supposed to say it. Look, Vanessa," he started again. "You're hot and all, and it's been fun hanging out – well, it used to be fun," he qualified this. "But – I need some space." His eyes lit up, and she was shocked to see him smile. "Yeah, that was it!" His face fell into a solemn expression again and he recited what she could tell was his practiced line: "We need to give each other some space."

She stared at him for a long moment before she said, "Are you breaking up with me?"

"Well… um… yeah." There was a hint of dread in his eyes as he said this.

Vanessa leapt to her feet. "Oh, no. You are _not_ breaking up with me!"

"Whoa," he scrambled away from her boots and managed to stand up, raising his hands in self-defense. "Don't freak out."

"You can't break up with me!" she railed at him. "I'm breaking up with you!"

"Huh?" said Johnny.

"I came out here to tell you it's over," she explained. "We're through, Johnny. I'm done."

He processed these words with a disbelieving expression, then said, "I wish you'd told me that first. It would have made this a lot easier."

"I _did_ tell you first! Well, I _tried_," she corrected herself, "but you had to interrupt me!"

"I didn't know that's what you were talking about," he protested this. "You were just kind of going on…"

"Ugh, I can't believe we're even having this conversation," she groaned.

"Yeah," he agreed. "You wanted to break up, we broke up, what's the big deal?"

Vanessa clenched her fists and tossed her head back, trying to calm herself.

To her surprise, Johnny said, quietly, "It's another guy, right?"

"What?" Her eyes shot to his, startled by the accusation.

"That's why you've been avoiding me. And why you've gotten all weird. You like some other guy."

"Where did that come from?" she challenged.

"It's okay," he assured her. "I'm not going to go all psycho on you about it. But, if it's Bruno, I think you should know that he's totally hung up on Misty Morrison…"

"It's not Bruno," she shook her head, wondering where he'd gotten that idea.

"It's not that bizzaro midget guy who hangs out with your Dad, is it?"

She didn't even know how to respond to this, until Johnny clarified, "The dude who hung out at the campfire with us? In the kind of… ducky/beaver suit? 'Cause I saw that episode of CSI, and those guys are totally freaky."

_Perry?_ Had he actually just suggested that she was interested in _Perry?_ "You cannot be serious." She groaned in frustration. "Why does it have to be another guy?"

Johnny's next question knocked her for a bigger loop. "Is it another girl? 'Cause if, like, you and Lacey are – you know – experimenting…? Well, I'm cool with that." She was appalled when he said this with a little snicker and a curious gleam in his eye.

"No!" Vanessa didn't want to know how this idea had gotten into his head. "I am not _experimenting_ with anyone. And I'm not into girls, Johnny; sorry. For the last time, I am not dumping you because I've hooked up with someone else."

"Oh, whoa," he put a hand to his head, as something new apparently occurred to him. "It's _that_, isn't it. Oh, man, I knew it."

"Knew _what_?"

"You're still mad about the stupid roller coaster, aren't you?"

She knew at once what he was talking about. The _Velocimangler_. Him dragging her on the Velocimangler at World of Thrills, and being useless and dismissive when she had come off it half-dead, vomiting all over, terrified and humiliated and - This memory hadn't even crossed her mind during their conversation, but now it enraged her. "I should have broken up with you right there! If you cared about me at all, you never would have made me do that! Even if you thought I could handle it, once I got sick, you would have done something to help, not just stand there and roll your eyes like I was intentionally ruining your day! You'd better believe I'm still mad about the _stupid roller coaster!_" she jabbed a finger at him. "If you were even _half_ the gentleman that-" Vanessa bit her lip, cutting off the sentence with a hiccup of distress. For the first time today, she felt tears welling up in her eyes. She could feel her face burning as she cried out to the heavens, "IT IS NOT ANOTHER GUY!"

"Whoa, chill out!" Johnny looked alarmed by her outburst. "You said that already."

Her voice was shaking as she declared, "I don't want to talk about this any more." Grabbing her backpack, she pushed past him and walked toward the street. "You're right; I wanted to break up, we broke up. That's all. Goodbye, Johnny."

He didn't try to stop her. He didn't follow her. He didn't even say goodbye. Vanessa angrily wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. How _dare_ Johnny break up with her like it was his idea! She knew she should have been relieved to have it over so easily, but this… This made her wonder how much he had ever cared in the first place. Walking to the front of the school, she texted her Dad again to let him know she was ready, and went to work on calming herself down before he got there.

She thought she had done a good job of this, but apparently not. When Dad pulled up on his scooter, he gave her a cheery, "Hi, Sweetie!" But, once he'd gotten a look at her, he'd promptly shut down the machine and climbed off. "Vanessa, have you been crying?"

"No," she lied, not very convincingly. The next thing she knew, Dad's arm was around her shoulders, and he was looking into her face with concern. She tried to shrug him off before the tears started all over again. "Dad, I'm fine," she insisted, then, knowing he wouldn't stop fussing until she had told him, she confessed, "Johnny and I broke up."

"Oh, Baby Girl," he said, with a tenderness that surprised her, hugging her in both arms. "Where is he?" Dad looked around, reaching up for his helmet. "I've still got the Away-inator here, we can settle this right now…"

"No, Dad, just leave it." Hastily, she grabbed his arm. "I just want to go home."

"All right," he gave in grudgingly, fetching the other helmet from the scooter. Before he handed it to her, though, he said, "I suppose now that it's over, I can tell you: Your mother and I never liked that Visigoth Punk Kid."

Vanessa blinked at him. "Really? But – you were always so nice to him."

"Well," Dad confessed, "your mother thought that, the more we tried to discourage it, the more stubborn you would be about it, and we didn't want you sneaking around to see him."

"You don't trust me?" she bristled.

Dad defended himself. "Of course we do, but…"

"No, you're right," she sighed. "If I'd known you hated him, I would have wasted even more time on him, just to annoy you."

Dad grinned a bit sheepishly as he acknowledged, "Yeah. Just like your mother." He gave her the helmet and said, "That boy wasn't good enough for you, Sweetie. You can do much better."

Vanessa climbed on the scooter behind him. She felt lighter already, as if a weight had been removed from her, and reflecting on her Dad's words, she said, with a little smile: "Yes. Yes, I can."

THE END

**A/N – Characters belong to Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh – and I'll bet they didn't guess when they first brought him in that poor Johnny would end up so reviled and abused by a certain segment of fans.**


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